By Erin Harrison
In today’s data-driven business landscape, legal leaders are redefining their role, moving from risk managers to strategic growth enablers. But demonstrating that shift requires more than collecting numbers; it demands using data to tell a compelling story about how legal drives the business forward.
At this year’s Women, Influence & Power in Law (WIPL) conference, my colleague Amy Hanan, Chief Growth Officer at LIMELIGHT, joined Jessica Smiley, Team Lead at Bloomberg Law, Atinuke Diver, VP of Impact at DGIC, Laura Budzichowski , GC of National Gypsum Company, and Megan Fouty, GC of Glowforge, Inc. for a conversation on how data can elevate legal’s influence and visibility within the enterprise. Their session, “From Metrics to Influence: Leveraging Data to Measure Success and Strengthen Your Legal Department’s Organizational Impact,” explored how the right metrics can transform legal from a reactive function into a revenue-generating machine.
The Hard Part Isn’t Collecting Data, it’s Collecting the Right Data
Most legal departments already track activity – contracts processed, matters closed, invoices reviewed. But the panelists emphasized that the real challenge lies in consistently collecting data from across the organization that reflects the overall health of the business. When legal can access metrics from finance, sales, and operations, they gain a holistic view that enables them to connect legal work to business outcomes, and to move from working in the business to working on the business.
Turning Metrics into Meaning
“Data without context is just noise,” Hanan shared. The key is to transform that noise into narrative; to show how the legal department can contribute to faster sales cycles, reduced risk exposure, or increased operational efficiency.
Legal teams also don’t have to start from scratch, or go it alone – when building dashboards and reports that demonstrate business impact. Many of the insights already exist elsewhere in the organization, Hanan noted
Board decks, for example, often reveal the metrics that matter most to leadership. Marketing and finance teams can offer guidance on performance measurement, data visualization, and storytelling techniques. Revenue operations may already be tracking data points that connect directly to legal activity, such as deal velocity or contract value.
Even customer success managers (CSMs) at technology vendors can help legal teams uncover new ways to extract and present data. By tapping into these existing resources, legal leaders can align their reporting with the broader business narrative and accelerate the path toward meaningful measurement.
Fouty illustrated this point with a powerful example: by improving contract turnaround times at Glowforge, her legal department directly helped expedite the sales process, allowing deals to close faster and revenue to flow sooner.
Her advice was simple but strategic: pick something to measure and tie it to a dollar amount. Whether that means quantifying how much faster contracts are being executed or how many hours automation has saved, attaching a business value to each metric transforms legal’s impact into terms that resonate with leadership.
Let the Process Lead to the Right Tool
For departments without access to sophisticated legal analytics platforms or AI-based dashboards, simplicity is the best starting point. Even basic tools like a whiteboard, spreadsheet, or shared tracker, can help capture meaningful data manually. Once the process is defined, the right technology naturally follows.
That said, AI is fast becoming a powerful accelerator for legal operations. From aggregating data across systems to running reports and identifying trends, AI tools can automate the heavy lifting and free legal professionals to focus on strategy. When used thoughtfully, AI helps teams shift from reacting to requests to proactively guiding business decisions.
From Insight to Influence
At its core, data is not just a measure of performance, it’s a lever for influence. When legal leaders can demonstrate how their teams enable revenue, reduce friction, and contribute to organizational health, they elevate the function from cost center to competitive advantage.
At LIMELIGHT, we believe metrics are more than numbers – they’re the foundation of legal storytelling. By capturing, contextualizing, and communicating data with purpose, legal teams can shape perception, strengthen alignment with the business, and ultimately position themselves as indispensable partners in driving growth.